How to Recover Deleted Photos & Videos from a Canon Camera

Losing files on your Canon camera? Don’t worry (yet), it’s a common problem. In fact, most users will be able to do Canon photo recovery on their own. This article is a step-by-step guide on how to recover deleted photos from a Canon camera (and videos), as well as a collection of useful information on the causes and prevention of data loss on Canon cameras.

Is it Possible to Recover Data From a Canon Digital Camera

Yes! In most cases (barring physical damage), you should be able to recover most of your data by yourself. But you’ll need the help of good data recovery software. If I want to recover deleted photos from my Canon EOS R5, I need software that can preview RAW files, which are the unprocessed photo and video data stored on cameras before they get converted to “readable” files. Like many recent Canon cameras, it also shoots up to 8K video (7,680 x 4,320 pixels), which is 121.5GB per minute in its raw state.

We have everything you need to get started in the step-by-step guide on how to recover deleted videos from Canon cameras (as well as photos and other files). For now though, you might want to figure out what exactly caused the data loss, as well as some other useful information that will help you be more knowledgeable about your camera’s memory.

Common Data Loss Scenarios Related to Canon Cameras

Data loss on Canon cameras happens to a lot of users, and can be caused by a variety of reasons. Here are the most common ones (as well as our recommended solutions you can try AFTER recovering your data):

If those don’t work, restore your data using data recovery software, then format the SD card.

Popular Models of Canon Cameras

The guides we detailed below should be suitable for most modern cameras, including those used by professional photographers and videographers. Below are some of the most popular Canon cameras that will work with this method.

Types of Cards that Canon Cameras Work With

Canon has always been a huge player in the camera market. Thus, they are one of the most compatible brands that can accommodate a wide range of memory cards. Below are the most common types of memory cards that will work with the recovery methods we recommend in the article, including Canon CF card recovery – most useful for professionals. We also listed what devices they are normally used with (including Canon digital cameras, DSLR cameras, and mirrorless cameras).

How to Recover Deleted Photos & Videos From a Canon Camera

The best way to recover deleted photos and videos from a Canon camera is to detach its memory card (see above section) and connect it to your computer using a USB-type or built-in card reader. Then, you can recover deleted files from your SD card (or any memory card listed above) using a data recovery tool. Most data recovery software can recognize memory cards just fine, so you won’t encounter many problems during the process of restoration.

For this article, we’ll be demonstrating this task using Disk Drill and Stellar Photo Recovery. Both tools are very popular for recovering data from different devices, including professional cameras. They will work well for Canon SD card recovery. Read through our step-by-step guides below (which include screenshots) to decide which tool suits you better.

Option A: Disk Drill

Unlike other software that offers separate subscriptions based on file type, with Disk Drill, you can recover photos, videos, audio files, documents, and more – it’s even capable of RAW SD card recovery (we cover all of this and more, including Disk Drill’s free additional tools, in our full Disk Drill review). This makes it a super useful tool to have at home or in the office.

1. Plug in your SD card to your computer using a USB-type card reader or your laptop’s built-in card reader.
2. Download and install Disk Drill. Then, launch it by double-clicking its icon.
3. Select your SD card from the drive selection list, then click “Search for lost data”.
4. Wait for Disk Drill to complete its can. Then, click “Review found items”.
5. You’ll be presented with a list of files that Disk Drill found. You can use the search bar and the file type sidebar on the left-most side to narrow down your search. If we want to recover a raw Canon photo, we can type “CR2” (Canon raw extension) in the search bar and filter results by Pictures only.
6. Preview any file (including videos) by hovering your mouse pointer to the left of its file name, then clicking the eye button that appears. Disk Drill can also preview raw files, as I’ll demonstrate with an old photo I took with my Canon 700D:
7. Select the files you want to recover from your SD card by ticking the boxes in the checkbox column. Once you’re satisfied with your selection, click “Recover”.
8. Select the destination folder for your recovered files – make sure to select a location on your computer, and not on your SD card (otherwise, you may overwrite your existing data.). Then, click “OK”.

Option B: Stellar Photo Recovery

Unfortunately, you will have to pay for another subscription if you want to recover other file types. However, if you only want to recover deleted videos from your SD card (as well as photo and audio files), it’s a good choice. To recover deleted photos from Canon camera SD card, do the following:

1. Insert your memory card into your computer using a USB-type or built-in card reader.
2. Download and install Stellar Photo Recovery from Stellar’s official website.
3. Launch Stellar Photo Recovery. You may be greeted by a popup screen to scan your memory card – exit out of it to go to Stellar’s main screen. Then, select your memory card from the list, toggle on the “Deep Scan” option on the bottom-left corner of the window, then click “Scan”.
4. Once the scan is complete, click “OK”.
5. Make sure the preview is toggled on, and click on any file to display it in the preview window. Like Disk Drill, Stellar Photo Recovery can preview most raw Canon files.
6. Select the files you want to recover by ticking the checkboxes in the left-most column, then click “Recover”.
7. At this point, you’ll be prompted to activate your copy of the software using an activation key – Stellar will also launch your browser to the page where you can pay for a copy. If you have an activated copy, simply select a location on your computer (not on your memory card) where Stellar will save your files and complete the process.

Can I Restore Data From a Camera Directly?

No, you can’t. Years ago, devices used a file transfer protocol called UMS (USB Mass Storage), which gave users and other devices access to the file system. With these older devices, you could freely drag-and-drop files to and from a computer, and third-party software could easily extract and restore data.

Memory cards, however, are flash storage. You can easily access their file system and use data recovery software without any problems. This is why we recommend scanning your memory card directly as the best method of recovering data from your Canon camera. Jump to this section of the article for a step-by-step guide: How to Recover Deleted Photos & Videos From a Canon Camera.

FAQ

Conclusion

Your data is critical – but there are so many things that can cause them to go missing. This is a friendly reminder from the Cleverfiles team to always back up your data (Disk Drill offers this feature for free – it’s called “Byte-to-Byte Backup” and it works super well), both on a physical drive and in the cloud if possible. But having a working knowledge of data recovery and Canon file recovery software is an additional safety net we hope you never need (but won’t let you down when you eventually do).